Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole, acclaimed for her dual roles in the Broadway musical Grey Gardens, will miss the Dec. 3 performance of the show at the Walter Kerr Theatre so she can appear at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC.

Maureen Moore
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Ebersole hasn't missed a performance of the Doug Wright-Scott Frankel-Michael Korie show since its world premiere this past spring at Playwrights Horizons.

The Dec. 3 Kennedy Center Honors Gala will be taped by CBS as a two-hour prime time special to be broadcast Dec. 26.

Kelly Gonda, president of East of Doheny, which is the lead producer of the musical, stated, "We congratulate Christine and look forward to seeing her on the Honors Gala's television broadcast. Additionally, in the time-honored tradition of 'The show must go on,' we're lucky to have the wonderful Maureen Moore step into the show for Christine that day. As anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing Maureen perform knows — and her Mama Rose in the recent Broadway revival of Gypsy was staggering — she is a passionate, talented and accomplished actress. We look forward to Maureen making her Grey Gardens debut and for audiences to experience her Edith and 'Little' Edie. We're proud that she'll be the second of what we hope will be a long line of Edies in the years to come."

A respected and accomplished Broadway performer with over a dozen Broadway credits, Maureen Moore has a long history as a standby for leading Broadway actresses. In addition to going on for Peters in the role of Mama Rose during the 2003 revival of Gypsy, she also stood by for Peters as Emma in Song & Dance. Her other standby credits include the leading roles of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and Fraulein Schneider in the 1998 revival of Cabaret. Her many non-standby Broadway credits include Fantine in Les Misérables, Claire in Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Constanze in Amadeus, Cordelia in Falsettos and her Broadway debut as June in the 1974 revival of Gypsy. She's also familiar to TV viewers for her performance as Countess Charlotte Malcolm in the PBS "Live from Lincoln Center" broadcast of the New York City Opera production of A Little Night Music.

"The incredible story of Jackie Kennedy Onassis's most outrageous relatives, Grey Gardens brings to life her delightfully eccentric aunt and cousin: Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter 'Little' Edie," according to the producers. "Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, these two women became East Hampton's most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Set in two eras — in 1941 when the estate was in its prime and in 1973 when it was reduced to squalor — the musical tells the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story of two indomitable individuals."

Tickets are available by going online to www.telecharge.com, calling (212) 239-6200 or visiting The Walter Kerr Theatre box office (219 West 48th Street).